


A More Civilized Time

by FrostyEmma



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Best Friends, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Finn-centric, Friendship/Love, Hanging Out, M/M, POV Character of Color, Planet Naboo (Star Wars), Slice of Life, Snacks & Snack Food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-06-08 07:59:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6846133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostyEmma/pseuds/FrostyEmma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Poe invites the both of them - Finn and Rey - to his room one evening. “We can watch a little something,” he says, waggling his eyebrows. “And maybe a little something else.” He goes for the eyebrow waggle again, but he can’t hold the look and dissolves into laughter.</em>
</p><p>Finn has Rey, Poe, and a bowl of spicy snack food. Maybe contentment is where one finds it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A More Civilized Time

One can learn a lot, Finn decides, from a holovid.

Poe invites the both of them - Finn and Rey - to his room one evening. “We can watch a little something,” he says, waggling his eyebrows. “And maybe a little something else.” He goes for the eyebrow waggle again, but he can’t hold the look and dissolves into laughter.

“So long as you make those crispy bits,” Rey says, and Poe hastily agrees. Poe had made a bowl of crispy bits one evening: little bits of popped crunchy somethings that Finn can’t quite identify, drizzled in hot oil and sprinkled with a red powder that makes them spicy. He and Rey devoured it in minutes, to Poe’s pleasant surprise and shock, and then he hurried to make them another bowl.

“There will always be crispy bits,” Poe says. BB-8 trills his approval next to him. “Always.”

\---

The holovid - the little something that Poe promised - turns out to be a historical documentary of Naboo in the last few years of the Old Republic.

Finn decides to be diplomatic about the choice. The company - and the crispy bits - are more than enough. 

“I don’t know much about Naboo,” he offers politely. 

“I thought we’d be watching something…” Rey searches for the words. Popular culture - the romantic Twi’lek holovids Poe favors and the Rodian synth music Jessika Pava plays constantly and the Bothan gossip columns that everyone reads, but won’t admit to reading - are still pretty new and exciting to her. “Shinier?”

“Action oriented?” Finn tries. Politely, of course. He has a bowl of crispy bits in his lap and the company is good. 

“There is so much action in this,” Poe promises. “The speeders are so shiny. The droids are…”

BB-8 tweets at him, angry and frustrated. And jealous, Finn thinks? He’s gotten much better at interpreting the droid’s own unique language. 

“Nothing like you,” Poe finishes, and BB-8 trills in contentment. 

\---

 _Naboo was the jewel of the Old Republic_ , the narrator announces with something like pride in his voice. _It was a planet of high culture and haute couture fashion, a model for democracy, elegance, and harmony for all of the Old Republic._

The camera pans up to a tall, lithe human woman, skin dark as the midnight sky. She has a rich, full mouth, stained with pink gloss, and high cheekbones accentuated with a dusting of gold powder. Her hair is gathered up and up and up, held together with interlocking gold hoops, and she wears a shimmering blue dress that ripples like water when she walks.

 _It was a more civilized time,_ the narrator says, and Finn wonders if that can possibly be true. If there was ever a more civilized time, ever a time when beings weren’t warring against each other, and he decides probably not. Probably not, but right in that moment - with Rey on one side of him and Poe on the other, and a bowl of spicy, warm crispy bits between them - he’s strangely okay with the idea.

They’ll be okay, he thinks. So long as they’re together, one way or another, they’ll be okay. 

\---

Rey kisses him behind the ear, her mouth still warm and a bit oily from the crispy bits. Finn doesn’t care, doesn’t move to wipe it off. She could cover him with oil from head to toe, for all he cares, so long as they’re together. He wraps an arm around her and she leans her head against his shoulder, and they rock back and forth for a moment, smiling and content.

“I have more crispy bits,” Poe announces, coming back into the room with a full bowl. He pulls up, hesitates. “Are you having a moment? Is there a moment going on?”

“We can all have a moment,” Rey says, and giggles (Finn loves the sound, loves the joy), and Poe doesn’t hesitate. He sets the bowl down and joins them, and then the three of them have their arms around each other. They watch the holovid in silence for a few more minutes.

\---

The holovid continues with another parade of high fashion and elaborate hairstyles, and Finn finds himself wondering how the Nubians balanced their clear need for complex wardrobes with their even more complicated democracy. 

“So they just… elected a queen? A teenage queen?” Rey frowns. “How did that even work?”

Poe shrugs. “Not well, I’d wager.”

“How much would you wager?” Finn murmurs, strangely mesmerized by the array of twisting hairstyles so favored on Naboo.

“Well, where are those queens now?” Poe shrugs. “Didn’t work out so well, did it?”

Finn looks at him.

Poe shrugs again. “But they made truly beautiful speeders. Works of art, really.”

\---

Later, while Finn lays between them, satiated and warm and content, he hears the narrator’s voice again. _It was a more civilized time._ And he still doesn’t really think that’s true. Doesn’t really think there was a more civilized time at any point in the galaxy’s very long history.

But Rey lays on one side of him, curled up tightly with both her arms wrapped around one of his, and Poe lays on the other, stretched out and luxurious and snoring softly. And maybe there was never a more civilized time, maybe there never will be, but this?

This is contentment. 

And that, he thinks, has to be enough. At least for a time, that has to be enough.

Contentment is worth fighting for.

Finn sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback, comments, and popcorn recipes are warmly welcomed and received.


End file.
